Tips on How to Increase Baby's Appetite

Start from 6 months, baby has to be introduced to solid food besides breast milk or formulae milk. Giving a solid food is very important for keeping the nutrition balance in baby, from solid food baby can gain more carbohydrate, protein, lipid, vitamin, mineral and also fiber for fulfilling their nutrition needs. Usually at this stage when you should wean baby to solid food, you will find many obstacles in which baby always refusing to be weaned. Therefore, we have to always having more ideas so that we can wean baby to also consume solid food instead of milk. Here are tips and tricks for successful increasing baby’s appetite to solid food:

Decrease breastfeeding (giving milk) frequency. For 6 to 9 months baby, giving breast milk (or formulae milk) should be not more than twice a day, once in the morning and the other one is at night. This is conducted simply to make baby feel hungry at noon.
Give a break after you breastfeed her before you start to feed solid food to your baby. Usually, after breastfeed in the morning, 6 to 9 months baby is predicted still feel full for the next 4 hours. So, try to give baby’s first meal on that day at 10 o’clock. It is suggested that parents give a milk porridge to baby, because it is very possible that baby still imagine the milk taste on their next meal.
Make a variation for baby’s food in its form and texture. It is better to not always give porridge to baby, sometimes you can give her biscuit and fruit. This variation of texture will stimulate baby’s ability in chewing and swallowing food. If you always give baby one type of meal, it is quite possible that baby will feel bore and lazy to eat solid food again.
Parent should decrease giving sugar-content food to baby, because food that contain sugar or carbohydrate are easily able to make baby feel full. Although baby is used to feel sweet taste in their foods, parent should be able to decrease sugar consumption in baby. You can do it successfully only if you decrease the giving of sugar-content food step by step.
Between meal time (solid food given), give baby a break. For 6 to 9 months baby, it is usually needed 4 hours before next meal given. In that 4 hours, it suggested parent give baby snacks such as fruits and biscuit.
Avoid giving food to baby with only one taste. Baby that is used to eat food with sweet taste will refuse other food with different taste beside sweet. So, I think parents should also make variation in taste when giving solid food to baby.
Keep increasing the texture of food gradually. Especially food with rough texture, for 9-month-baby parents should increase the roughness of food texture.
Parents should create encouraging atmosphere in giving food to baby. What I mean with encouraging atmosphere is the atmosphere in which baby always want to eat various food with different taste. At least parent need three main things to create encouraging atmosphere. First, you have to provide various foods for your baby, let them know and make the food as interesting as possible, you can play with colors. Second, give your baby an example of how to eat food correctly. And third, make sure there are no obstacle or intruder as long as you give food to your baby.
Baby Massage. According to the research, in massaging baby there will be an increasing of baby’s brain nerve activity. This increasing will cause the secretion of an enzyme that helps digestion activity in baby’s digestion tract. This thing of course will lead to a better performance of baby’s digestion tract in digesting food. Automatically baby will feel hungry faster than before.
Adjacent stimulation will increase baby’s activity, so they will spend more calories. As you can guest that baby will feel hungry along with the increasing of her activity.

Hopefully by doing 10 tips above, you can successfully feed your baby along with the increasing of baby’s appetite to food.